| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Circular Staircase by Mary Roberts Rinehart: our care, and Thomas went upstairs night and morning to greet his
young mistress from the doorway. Poor Thomas! He had the
faculty--found still in some old negroes, who cling to the
traditions of slavery days--of making his employer's interest
his. It was always "we" with Thomas; I miss him sorely; pipe-
smoking, obsequious, not over reliable, kindly old man!
On Thursday Mr. Harton, the Armstrongs' legal adviser, called up
from town. He had been advised, he said, that Mrs. Armstrong was
coming east with her husband's body and would arrive Monday. He
came with some hesitation, he went on, to the fact that he had
been further instructed to ask me to relinquish my lease on
The Circular Staircase |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce: Erin," replied: "No, sir, but I should like to anchor on it." Years
afterwards, when he had been hanged as a pirate after a career of
unparalleled atrocities, the following memorandum was found in the
ship's log that he had kept at the time of his reply:
Aug. 3d, 1842. Made a joke on the ex-Isle of Erin. Coldly
received. War with the whole world!
EXISTENCE, n.
A transient, horrible, fantastic dream,
Wherein is nothing yet all things do seem:
From which we're wakened by a friendly nudge
Of our bedfellow Death, and cry: "O fudge!"
The Devil's Dictionary |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Death by Patrick Henry: They tell us, sir, that we are weak; unable to cope with so formidable
an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week,
or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a British
guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength but
irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance
by lying supinely on our backs and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until
our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot? Sir, we are not weak if we make
a proper use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power.
The millions of people, armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a
country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy
can send against us. Besides, sir, we shall not fight our battles alone.
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The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte by Karl Marx: phalanx of Order," and the hero Crapulinsky makes his entry into the
Tuileries as the "Savior of Society."
II
Let us resume the thread of events.
The history of the Constitutional National Assembly from the June days
on, is the history of the supremacy and dissolution of the republican
bourgeois party, the party which is known under several names of
"Tricolor Republican," "True Republican," "Political Republican,"
"Formal Republican," etc., etc. Under the bourgeois monarchy of Louis
Philippe, this party had constituted the Official Republican Opposition,
and consequently had been a recognized element in the then political
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